5 Things You Should Know About Remember Me

Having played the first two levels, we have jotted down a few things you should know about Capcom’s upcoming action title.

By Mufaddal Fakhruddin

It's hard not to be impressed by Remember Me based from the initial trailer. Sci-fi has always intrigued me, and if you manage to spin a whole new concept like 'remixing memories' - where you jump-in and tweak someone's memory like if it were a Lego puzzle - you have me hooked.

Recently, I got the opportunity to try Capcom and Dontnod's action-adventure for the first time, and with no pun in my heart, have jotted down these five points of interest that you should know about the game.

Uh, It's Not Like Mirror's Edge

Remember Me is as much Mirror's Edge as Uncharted is, which is not much. Since the game's announcement, there have been comparisons between it and DICE's first-person platformer, and up to some extent I can see where they are coming from though expectations must be kept in check. The two games have quite similar themes: you have a strong, nimble female protagonist, in a dystopian, future-world scenario, against an organization that's bad and needs taking down. But these basic similarities are where it ends; Remember Me is quite far off and different in play, feel and look.

There are no parkour elements, which is a shame considering how the game is setup. Platforming is key in Remember Me, required to maneuver the underground slums infested by memory-less creeps known as Leapers, to the posh, augmented-reality laden structures of the game's Neo-Paris. The gameplay is similar to the Uncharteds and Enslaveds of the third-person genre, where the player must guide the main protagonist Nilin from one ledge, roof, and platform to another, all by pressing a single button and the direction of the jump. The game even goes into oversimplification by marking where you must go next, and while we have only played two levels, such hand-holding feels immediately unnecessary despite a possibility of being part of a really long tutorial.

With how the game is structured, Remember Me in fact feels very much like the new DmC. The rhythm of platforming-fight-platforming-cutscene-boss-battle is all too familiar, and even looks and feels like something out of Ninja Theory. Our demo ended just before we could engage in the first proper boss fight (you can see this burly of a beast in the X-Mas trailer), and the design sensibilities of this set piece, transforming the fight into a telecast of a wrestling match complete with pyrotechnics and corny one-liners (and there are a lot of them in the game), makes apparent Dontnod's inspiration.

Setting is Great, But Story...Not So Much

Remember Me’s Neo-Paris is a hodgepodge of various sci-fi tropes, movies and games, borrowing heavily from the likes of Minority Report, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and even to some extent, Half Life. This, despite its slightly cluttered undertones, makes for a strange yet fresh world to base a story on, and brings on platter interesting choices to chew upon.

The game begins in the filthy sewers of the city. Nilin is dumped in a coffin and thrown to rot, waking up to find she has no memory of her past life, and to the ugly faces of the Leapers, who otherwise normal people have turned into mutants, scavengers of anything they can live off their miserable lives on. Beginning from this underbelly and leading up to the façade on the top – an ultra-modern, augmented-reality heavy Paris where the rich and the affordable rest – the game effectively reins you in its make-believe world.

Of note here is the attention put into the detailing. Augmented-reality is something the big wigs of the technology industry are actively looking into, and Remember Me gives a probable peek into this very near future. Shops advertise by running text and images that popup in the air as you near them; sign boards hover over the air in streets and sidewalks, and elsewhere in the game, you can load up memories to experience them, regardless of it being your own or someone else’s.

All of this is eclipsed by somewhat routine mix of story elements that just doesn’t seem to interest when played out. There is a solid premise here, make no mistake: Nilin is a famous memory hunter who can remix, alter, or simply steal memories for her, or her client’s benefits. Obviously, she has wronged someone to have her memory wiped, and now must team up with her allies (both genuine and questionable) to extract revenge. It’s, of course, hard to judge a game’s story having played only for an hour and half, however the lethargic pace, uninteresting expositions, and some horrible dialogues made me simply shrug at what was happening on screen, and care less about what Nilin was going through and what she is ultimately trying to accomplish.

It Might Not Be Free-Roaming

This is more of a personal bummer than what Dontnod may or may not have lead you to believe. Remember Me is interesting, the Neo-Paris is interesting, the mix of modern technology and classical architecture is interesting, and this begs to be explored, experienced, and be taken in. By free-roaming.

Unfortunately, however, I don’t think free-roaming is something Dontnod is aiming at with Remember Me. Again, this is very much like DmC – there are side tracks for collectibles (stashes of memories, for instance, that gains you an extra health bar), however all those simply converge into the main objective path, towards the rhythm of platforming, fighting, and boss battling.

This is based on our short demo, of course. I am more than hoping that some elements of free-roaming and sandbox-ing are present in the full game between mission objectives ala Assassin’s Creed, where you can sideline yourself to go sight-seeing and unlocking more of the game.

The Combat is Innovative

Between jumping, remixing memories, and listening to some inexcusably bad writing, you will be beating up baddies. Lots, and lots of them.

If you are familiar with the recent Batman games, and excel at them on any degree, you will be at home in Remember Me. It employs the same two-button fighting mechanics to string together series of combos to dispose of baddies. Like Batman, the combat is timing-reliant and discourages you to mash buttons, which nearly always results in certain death.

Timing is not exactly my forte, and for the most part, my behind was handed to me in most fights on the game’s Normal difficulty. My colleague Nick Rego, who skillfully masters any combos, was far better, though. The learning curve isn’t too high, and if you pay enough attention, you will soon come in sync with the rhythm of the combos. The game even provides a helpful combo-counter to show where you are standing with a particular combo.

The combat lacks emergence, though, and a sense of…I guess, excitement? I can’t pinpoint it, but there is something missing, something that doesn’t click, and even the funky music that plays every time you pull off a combo doesn’t help lift that feeling. In games like Batman and DmC, finishing off enemies by getting that perfect timing, and that perfect combo, brings great satisfaction and an overall sense of accomplishment, which Remember Me is missing. The combat lacks impact, that flair, that excitement of pulling off a difficult maneuver.

Besides that, the combat is quite interesting thanks to the RPG-like Pressens combo creation. This is truly innovative stuff and dictates what kind of a player you will be in Remember Me. While the combos are set, each part of the combo - the punch, the kick - can be augmented to an effect. That could be either to deliver additional damage, to gain health, or decrease cooldown times of special moves. For instance, our demo only unlocked two moves, one which was a series of Xs and Ys. Each of those Xs and Ys could be augmented to the aforementioned effects, so during combat, your first blow could deal extra damage, whereas the rest can be to heal yourself and quickly unlock your special move.

Rather than simply having a set of combos unlock over time, Dontnod’s solution brings a completely fresh take on what can be done with the combos, and especially, when a particular combo must be executed.

Remixing Memories is The Best Thing You Will Do

Imagine this scenario: You are in a meeting with your boss. Suddenly, things that shouldn't happen, happen. Things that aren’t supposed to be there, are. Things that shouldn’t be said, are said. And the next thing you know, you have punched your boss in the face and have quit “on your own terms.” You are walking out your office door with a smug face full of satisfaction, not fully aware that this particular incident might not even have happened.

Thankfully, you won’t be playing sequences as lame as my analogy in Remember Me, but this is basically what remixing memory is. Nilin is a master remixer, altering details in a memory to lead people into believing something had occurred when it’s only fabricated by exploiting glitches in one’s memory. Glitches are those part of a memory that is void of certain detail that can be manipulated to create a ripple effect of consequences.

Like we did to Olga, a bounty hunter looking to claim the prize on Nilin’s head to pay for her husband’s hospital bills. Had it not for her dying husband, she would have never accepted the contract on Nilin. The only way out is to kill her husband, at least in her memory, to get her off from Nilin’s tracks, and even become an ally.

Remixing memory plays out much like an adventure game, where clues, or glitches, must be found by scrutinizing the environment and piecing them together to create a series of events, eventually leading up to the desired effect. For Olga’s husband, the trick was to kill him off as an accidental death caused by his own doctor. To reach that conclusion, a number of glitches could be exploited: bringing the table of operation utensils nearer, unstrapping the husband’s hand from the bed, inverting the memory flux on the support system, etc.

It’s not as simple as finding the glitches and ‘turning them on’. Each glitch when individually triggered goes off to some pretty wild conclusions, and in the case of our sequence, unlocking the wrong glitch can even kill Olga. A little bit of experimentation is need to realize the series in which the glitches must be turned on, the game won’t allow you to progress unless you have done that.

Remixing memory is incredibly cool. It’s possibly the best part about the game for me. However, it’s not easy to miss that remixing is not deep in terms of gameplay. What would have been awesome was to have an open-ended control over altering memories and have our own individual choices play out than having a pre-set constructed sequence that merely needs to be played out in the correct order.

Remember Me hasn’t quite blown me away as I had expected it would. I love the remixing bits, the augmentation-based combo system, and the incredibly detailed city of Neo-Paris, however the story appears lackluster with some poor writing and uninspired characters, an important piece of the puzzle that might make or break the game. But keep in mind that these are impressions from just a couple of hours of play, and I am quite sincerely hoping that Dontnod slaps across my criticism with an engaging, thoughtful game brimming with details and lore.